Corina Nolin says her son Maddox stopped asking about his fifth birthday party the moment the family fled their Fort McMurray home as the wildfires approached.
The mother-of-two had invited Maddox’s entire class, as well as several neighbours and friends to the party scheduled to take place near their Timberlea home.
Nolin said Maddox was eagerly counting down the days to the celebration planned for May 7. But when the time came to leave Fort McMurray, Nolin said she opted to fill her car with "survival gear," like water, food and medicine, and she left all personal belongings, including Maddox's birthday presents, behind.
"When we started running from the fire, not once did he mention the party anymore. It was like it never existed," Nolin told CTVNews.ca on Tuesday. "Even the morning of his birthday, we sang 'Happy Birthday' to him in the hotel room, he never even asked if he was going to get a single present."
Nolin said her husband's company, Finning, paid for her family’s Edmonton hotel room for five nights. When her husband mentioned their son's birthday to the staff at the DoubleTree Hilton Hotel, the hotel staff offered to bake Maddox a cake and offered some space to the family to throw a birthday party.
The staff even offered to invite some of the other young hotel guests to the party.
Nolin posted about the impromptu birthday party on her Facebook page, and friends in the area turned up to the event with presents.
"He was speechless. He could not believe it," Nolin said of the birthday party. "I was over the moon."
While the five-year-old was quite surprised by the celebration, Maddox admitted later that night that he had expected some sort of party to mark the special occasion.
"When my husband asked why he'd expect a party, since we weren't at home, Maddox said, 'Yes dad, but it's my birthday.'"
Nolin said her house in Timberlea is still standing, but she’s unsure of what kind of state it's in. The family has decided to stay in the hotel for at least another three nights, but Nolin said she's unsure of where to go from there, as it will likely be weeks, if not months, before she expects to return home.
"We don't know where to go, what to do," she said. "One thing I've learned in this whole disaster is it's so hard to ask for help, and it's even harder to accept help. It's way easier to offer your help to someone else."
